


Spotless Mind

by Card



Series: you and me, we got our own sense of time [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Not actually about "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:08:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27582518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Card/pseuds/Card
Summary: A Dirk side-fic set during Chapter 15 of Andrew Hussie Stole My Webcomic. This is what you get when you select ==>Be Dirk.
Series: you and me, we got our own sense of time [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2015131
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Spotless Mind

“Adults are, like, this mess of sadness and phobias.” **Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind**

**== > Be Dirk.**

Your lungs had started burning a long while before now and you should consider yourself lucky that the numbness is only not starting to set in your feet and make its way up your legs.

Your name is DIRK STRIDER and you are WAY TOO BUSY PONDERING TOTALLY DOPE CONCEPTS and doing a SHITLOAD of RUNNING to GIVE A FLYING FUCK about what is supposed to be your SWANKY-ASS INTRO.

As you exhale, your breath keeps fogging up your TOTALLY AWESOME SHADES but like hell, you are going to take them off. Even if the sky is cloudy enough where you can take them off with minimal issue. You have an image to keep up.

Hal, your AI computer clone, has been continuously pestering you for the last hours to do something productive with your time but as far as you can tell, you are being productive as shit and his nagging is one of two things that fuels your spite to keep running. Spite, and also you haven’t finished your thought process so Hal needs to get off your dick. Sorry, we can’t all be fucking computers.

It has been approximately forty-five minutes since you have started running and you don’t feel like stopping any time soon. The snowfall started to pick up about ten minutes ago so at some point it might not matter what you feel like when it becomes impossible to run in. But for now, you keep on moving forward.

You have not been able to take your mind off of yesterday.

Dave and Hal are both adamant about entering SBURB. The very same game that could most likely bring back Bro and Roxanne. Unless you were completely brain dead for the last eighteen plus years of your life, you would recognize that this is obviously very bad for a multitude of reasons, the main one being that you wouldn’t put it past Bro to drive a sword through your chest. Going by Homestuck logic, it makes sense that he hates your guts on principle since you are a clone of him, and apparently your main personality trait, besides the totally respectable love of all things horses and robotic, is your excruciating levels of self-loathing.

You used to wonder why he didn’t kill you on the roof the night he disappeared if that logic held. The more you thought about it, the more you realized it was probably some sadistic form of punishment directed at Dave. That had always been Bro’s tactic besides strifes in general, to mentally torture one of you by physically harming the other. When you were younger, you were completely powerless against him and you thought that might have changed as you’d gotten older and stronger. Clearly, you were wrong.

Hal things you have some unchecked trauma but that is a load of bull shit if you ever heard of it. You got self-awareness coming out of your ass and you can say with one hundred percent certainty that you are completely fine. While Bro is an abusive piece of shit that shouldn’t be allowed around any human being, it’s not trauma that drives you away from him, it’s that he would actually fucking kill you and Dave and maybe Roxy and Rose too.

You jog in place as you reach a busy intersection and wait for the cars to pass before continuing on your way.

In summary of that long internal monologue, SBURB would be a bad choice in terms of your and Dave’s lives. When it comes down to it, your family is the only one that matters so putting everyone in danger over what seemed like a mild inconvenience is such a bad fucking choice.

Which is the reason you decided to go running.

Because it’s not just a mild inconvenience. You remember some of the stuff Karkat told you about characters once they leave town and the temporary effects they get from the glitches. So long as everyone is close together, you all should be fine.

But it’s getting worse and you are a shitty person for being in fucking denial for so long so you didn’t have to think about Bro.

Hal and Dave both told you about the people that got glitched in large proportions while grouped together, including your self and some of your family. A bunch of the trolls got physical features, some that after a while will be impossible to hide. You are not safe in groups anymore and you are certainly not better off individually. At some point, people could just get deleted without warning. If Bro and Roxanne can come back if SBURB starts up, you and Dave get deleted, and people go forward with the game, then you’ll be in even more danger than if you just went along with everyone else and spawned on your planets and have the time to godtier so you can beat their asses.

So you have to make a choice. Do you want to play SBURB and have a chance at living or go down with the universe and get deleted which could result in either the possibility of everyone who was deleted getting put back in the game and Bro killing you or being gone forever?

Logistically (which you are very), it is not a hard decision to make. The hardest part of this is not laying the options out in front of you and spending hours pondering a choice. You would say that you could do this in your sleep but seeing how your dream self is dead, you’ll just stick with the decision is easy as shit. The thing that makes this so difficult is admitting you were wrong, which is mostly your giant-ass ego talking but hey if no one is giving you any shit for this, you might as well do it.

You didn’t want to be wrong. If you could have lived out your life close to your family and the glitches stuck to what they always were doing, you wouldn’t have had to do a damn thing.

Maybe you were being too idealistic? Because being wrong would have meant that no matter what, you are all going to be in danger, whether you stay on earth or play the game. Hal has told you multiple times before that this was an inevitable event, completely unavoidable, and you always played it off as some sort of selfish gain. Was it something you put in his programming? No, Hal did exactly what you designed him to do. He researched the comic and figured out what was going to happen. Hal was right and you were wrong and if everyone listened to you instead of two kids and an AI, you probably would have killed everyone.

Blue text appears in your vision and you unconsciously slow down to read it.

GG: Hello, Dirk, do you happen to know anything about wind? :B

You are happy, at least, that you are so goddamn smart in this particular field that you don’t have to type out a response and can, instead, just send what you are thinking through your shades. The wind thing is pretty unnerving, though.

TT: Besides anything that I have learned in mandatory science classes? No.

TT: Why?

GG: I’ll be frank with you, Dirk, John has turned into the human equivalent of a tornado and is unable to stop the wind.

GG: Jake had nothing and John is heading towards a full meltdown.

Shit, another glitch. And Jane was in proximity of him. You would suggest that Jane move in closer but John could possibly be sending debris everywhere so she should wait until everything is cleared so she can try to move closer to John. For now, you need to feign ignorance.

TT: Has John tried stopping it on his own?

TT: I admit that I’ve never heard of anything like that.

TT: … Unless this is one of your pranks and you are actually referring to a sudden development of Gastrointestinal Disorder.

This is definitely not Jane’s style of prank. She prefers the humiliation factor and really cheesy tricks in comparison to flat out lies. It lacks that Crocker flare that makes up most of her hijinks.

GG: This is unfortunately not a prank and he has tried stopping it on his own but that causes more damage. 

GG: I’m almost afraid the house is going to completely collapse!

GG: And John is totally freaking out! Should I try to calm him down?

Being the Heir of Breath and from what you’ve seen and read, he’s a relatively emotional guy so there is a good chance that the wind is heavily manipulated by how John is feeling. Also, Heirs are hella strong so any change in emotions could unknowingly raise or lower the wind intensity. Like you said before, she should probably try to move closer and calm him down once all debris and objects have been pushed to the side.

Something rams into your side and sends you crashing into the snow. Your shades also fly off and are buried somewhere in it. Fuck. You really need to fix them up so they don’t break as easily or fly off with a tiny gust of wind, Jesus Christ.

The something that ran into you also lies sprawled out in the snow across from you.

“Holy shit, Tuna!” Someone shouts as she rushes to the other person’s side.

You go to sit up but man, it feels like all the adrenalin that you had been riding on for the last hour was just kicked out from under you. Holy shit, it’s cold.

“Are you ok? That was a nasty spill-”

“I think I hit someone. My board skidded on some ice and- Fuuuck. Ow, that fucking hurt! Goddamnit!” The person who ran into you groans on the floor and you can just barely make out a mess of black hair and a bright yellow helmet from the corner of your eye. Damn, nevermind what you said earlier, it sucks to see without your glasses.

The girl crouched by the other guy turns towards you, still hovering close to him.

“Oh damn, dude. Are _you_ ok?”

You finally gather the energy to sit up and shake the snow from your hair. Immediately, you are searching through the snow for your glasses. How the fuck did they disappear so fast.

“Yep, I’m chill. Help that guy or whatever,” You respond shortly, finally feeling one of the edges of your shades and digging them out and slipping them on your face.

The girl has long red hair and characteristically red glasses. Nothing super out of the ordinary oh, besides the large blotch of gray that sits on her face and really sharp-looking teeth.

“Yo, you look like Kar’s friend- I don’t remember his name…” The guy, still lying on the ground says, only lifting his head up to see you.

“It’s Dave. Karkat talks about him all the flippin’ time, dude,” The girl responds, grabbing the other’s arm and pulling him to his feet.

“Why am I wet? What the fuck!” The guy, who you assume to be Karkat’s brother, grumbles loudly, trying to ring out the water from the back of his shirt.

Obviously, snow is just frozen rain will get you at least slightly damp but the dude is actually soaked from head to toe.

As you look down, you see an imprint of where he was laying, the snow he was laying on and around him had completely melted to the point to where the edges of the shape were jumping straight to water vapor. Even the grass underneath the snow was dead and slightly charred.

“Damn, Tuna, you have fire powers, that’s sick as hell,” The girl comments jokingly, but the guy just nods along with her.

“Fuck, I guess so.”

The girl stares at the charred spot on the ground for a while, watching as it is slowly covered with spots of white as the snow falls harder. She suddenly turns to you and holds out a fist.

“Nice to meet ya, if you are Dave’s bro. I’m Latula and this is Mituna,” She grins wildly and it’s rude to leave someone hanging.

“I’m Dirk and yeah, Dave’s my bro. Small world,” You comment, giving her a bump back before you attention is drawn to Mituna. The snow that falls onto him quickly evaporates like he is some kind of human radiator.

TT: Hal?

You send out a quick message and Hal responds back almost instantly.

AR: I know, I’m already on it.

AR: Mituna is the younger version of the Psiioniic, also known as the Helmsman, Ancestor of Sollux which makes his aspect Doom.

AR: Latula should be a given, red glasses and all, young Neophyte Redglare, Ancestor to Terezi and her aspect is Mind.

“Well, we should probably skate home. I think he might have a fever. Later, dude,” Latula tells you and you respond with a curt nod as the two of them pick up their fallen boards and push off.

TT: Get anything?

AR: Yep. I am about 98.41% sure that Latula is the Knight of Mind and Mituna is the Heir of Doom.

Your mind immediately jumps back to John and Jane. John is the Heir of Breath and Mituna is probably the Heir of Doom. That can't be a coincidence. 

“So the pattern is classes?” You say aloud. That… actually makes a lot of sense given everything else that has happened. Dave, Karkat, and Latula are all Knights, you, Eridan, and one other person are Princes, Nepeta and Roxy, Jade and Feferi, Jane and Aradia, and the Dersites were literally talking about both Bards being killed simultaneously. And you guys don’t really know the young Ancestors so no wonder you didn’t catch on sooner!

AR: That seems to be the case, which means that other people that could possibly be glitched are Damara Megido the Maid of Time, Rufio Nitram the Rogue of Breath, Porrim Maryam the Maid of Space, and Kurloz Makara the Prince of Rage.

You brush off any remaining snow and decide maybe it’s a good time to start going home.

“So that’s the Bards first about a month ago according to Dave. Then Princes, Knights, Rogues, Witches, and Maids the other night and Heirs now. So the next classes that could possibly be hit are-”

AR: Pages, Mages, Sylphs, Seers, and Theifs.

AR: You don’t have to list them off for me, I am a computer.

“It’s for my own personal reference, dipshit,” You grunt, shoving your cold hands into your pockets for warmth.

"I want to see if I can meet some of the pre-scratch Ancestors and test to see if this logic follows unless you can already check for yourself. Otherwise, we can wait and see what class is affected next. For now, I'm actually satisfied that Dave can't go running off doing whatever research he does in his spare time so I-we can look more into this."

AR: Interesting. I am curious when you actually started giving a fuck about all of this. 

You know it’s bait. You know you better than anyone and you would obviously try to bait yourself into a fight. So you should also know better not to fall for it.

“Shut up, Hal.”


End file.
